Author's Note: Hi. Dearest readers, I am going to inform you of some true awesomeness. One of my reviewers for this fic recommended me to a masterpiece entitled "What Should Have Happened in ATLA." It's really long, but if you're looking for something hilarious and brilliant to read, go find it. I particularly enjoyed chapter 63. My sincerest thanks to Leviticus Wilkes for the recommendation!

On another note, I would like to acknowledge to you the absolutely terrible job I've been doing at keeping with regular updates. As much as I would like to fulfill that "I'll update every few days" promise, I probably won't—my original excitement over this story is still alive, but I've gotten to the point where I actually want to take the time to plot it out and write it well. So…probably one or two a week, unless I come by a sudden expanse of free time.

On yet another note (last one, I promise), I'm going to start going back and adding chapter titles. You'll see the boring, generic "Chapter One" and "Chapter Two" be replaced with "Something Interesting" and "Something Relevant".

Enjoy this chapter! R&R!

I doubted that the bison was actually going to fly.

Of course, I had seen air temples before, and there was plentiful evidence for their possessing large numbers of the flying beasts. However, looking at Appa, I could not understand how it was supposed to get off the ground. It didn't have wings. It didn't look like it had very strong jumping legs. It looked extremely heavy. Most of the animals I knew of that could fly were the reverse.

I kept my doubts to myself, as Sokka was doing a good job voicing them for me.

"Flying bison, ha! Behold Katara, my flying sister!"

"Shut up, Sokka," the flying sister in question quipped from where the Avatar was showing her how to adjust Appa's saddle.

"Really, I'm telling you, he flies!" the Avatar insisted again. "Right, buddy?"

"MMMRRRRROOOORRRMMM," Appa confirmed.

It was a little past noon; the mountains that concealed the Southern Air Temple had come within sight about a half hour ago. The four of us—Uncle had elected to stay with the ship, apparently less than enamored by the idea of flying—and two escort guards were preparing for the flight up to the temple.

Aang was a mixture of excitement and wariness. The rest of us were just wary. We all knew what he would likely see up there, and none of us particularly looked forward to another glowing-and-windstorm incident.

"Sokka," I called quietly, walking away from the air bison and beckoning for the loud peasant to follow me. I took him out of earshot of our younger companions.

"What is it?" he inquired unsmilingly, picking up on my mood. The Water Tribe boy still did not like me, and I was still not fond of him, but we had reached a state of mutual tolerance.

"The Fire Nation is not particularly inclined to clean up the messes left in its wake," I alluded.

"And he shouldn't see them," Sokka concluded. "We shouldn't be going up there—he'll just freak out again and blow us all off the mountain."

"That's exactly what worries me," I confirmed. "But I do have a plan."

Sokka raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"First, we need to limit what he sees. Where in the temple would there have been no fighting, where there would now be no evidence of conflict?"

"I dunno…I haven't exactly been to an air temple before or seen a battle fought at one."

"I would guess that the higher levels would probably be safest in that respect. We can ask Aang about the layout and then ask to see somewhere out of the way. We'll distract him there for a while, and I'll have my guards leave us and run as rapid a cleanup effort as they can."

"But only two are coming!" Sokka objected. "Two people can't 'clean up' the whole temple in such a short time."

"I know," I admitted. "They'll do their best and hopefully decrease our chances of stumbling over too many skulls. The more we can distract him, and the sooner we can persuade him to leave, the better off we'll all be."

"Alright," said Sokka, looking past me to where his sister and the Avatar were perched atop the bison's head, affectionately running hands over its arrow. "Should we tell Katara?"

"Can she conceal our efforts from Aang?"

"Hmm. Maybe not. She'll probably look at him with her big sad eyes and get all emotional. I hate when girls do that."

"Same here."

"Huh." Sokka made a show of scrutinizing my purposefully unexpressive countenance. "You know, for a Fire Nation prince, you're not too bad a guy." He said so completely unabashedly, apparently intending that as a compliment.

I decided to take it as such. I nodded my thanks and walked back towards the bison. The Avatar reached down a hand to help me into the saddle, aid which I accepted without fuss.

I still didn't believe this thing was going to fly. It had no wings.

The saddle was roomy enough for all of us to sit comfortably. The Avatar took his position on the bison's head, reigns in hand, leaving me in the company of my two uniformed guards and the Water Tribe siblings.

"All set back there?" Aang called over his shoulder.

"All good!" Katara called back. She was nearly bursting with excitement, holding on tightly to the side of the saddle as though she really expected us to soon be airborne.

"Then hang on tight! Appa, yip yip!"

The bison lowed, sending vibrations throughout its frame, which we on its back could feel only too well. It made no indication of being about to take off into the sky.

"Come on, buddy, don't you want to go home?" the Avatar encouraged. "Appa, yip yip!"

Just as I was starting to wonder how long we would have to go through this before Aang gave it up, I was nearly thrown out of the saddle by the abruptness of the giant creature's leap into the air. By the time I had comprehended what had happened, my ship had become no more than a black smudge far behind and below us.

"He's flying! He's flying!" Sokka crowed, astounded. "He's actually—" Catching his sister's smug look, he shrugged and finished nonchalantly, "Big deal. He's flying."

I was unsure of my feelings towards flying. It was entirely new, and I supposed it was practical enough as a method of transportation, seeing as Appa was greatly outdistancing my ship, which made decent time in its own right. However, I wouldn't lie and say that it wasn't unsettling being this far up in the insubstantial sky. It was also much colder up here and a little harder to breathe. I would have lit a warm little fire, if not for the anticipated objection of my rather anti-firebender companions.

"Aren't you cold?" I asked the Water Tribe teens as my guards and I shivered.

They looked at each other and shrugged. "Not particularly," Katara said.

"It's much colder at the South Pole," Sokka added. "Especially in the winter."

"Doesn't it ever get this cold in the Fire Nation?" Katara inquired.

"No, never," I said, barely managing to keep my teeth from chattering. "It's always really hot there, even at night and while it rains."

"Huh," I heard from Katara, "I've never seen rain."

I did not have a response to this. However, I did not think it fair or appropriate that I was this cold while they were not, so the tongue of flame that appeared out of my mouth was entirely justified. As I did this little bit of bending, the fire that sat dormant in the core of my belly grew and spread to warm up my whole body.

I was watched by two obviously scandalized faces. I waited for them to say something, and Sokka even opened his mouth as if to do so, but he snapped it shut again and offered no comment.

"Let me know if you get cold," I added cheerfully, exhaling more fire. Steam rose around my head before dissipating into the air. There wasn't much more chatter, as we were getting close and engaged ourselves in watching for the first glimpses of the Southern Air Temple between the peaks of the mountains.

"Hey, Aang," Sokka called to the airbender perched on the bison's head, "Where is your room?"

"Around the back, around halfway up—wanna see it?"

"Yeah!" Katara piped up.

Sokka glanced at me, and I nodded—it would be as good a place as any to start.

"Alright then, we'll go there first," he said.

I nodded to the guards; they knew their orders.

Appa landed on a wide ledge that I conjectured was designed with that purpose in mind. I was glad when my feet contacted the ground again, and also glad that it was far less windy here, although I was still cold and breathless up on the mountaintop.

I had been to this temple once before, the four air temples having been the first places I checked in my search for the Avatar. However, I had not taken much time to see the details of the airbenders' mountaintop dwelling after it became apparent it was currently uninhabited. I did not remember this insignificant place.

"Hey, where are they going?" Katara asked, pointing to the receding figures of my guards.

"They have not seen an air temple before," I lied. "Upon their request, I gave them permission to explore. I would think that they did not find this residential portion particularly fascinating and went in pursuit of a more interesting view."

I followed the Avatar inside, and my eyes were met by a dusty, cluttered room. Aang looked around slowly, the cracks in the walls and ceiling letting shafts of light fall upon him. His expression was blank at the moment, although something was no doubt stirring beneath the calm surface.

"Is this it?" Sokka asked.

"Yeah," Aang said with some surprise in his voice. "This is my room." He looked at Sokka helplessly. "It's true, isn't it? It really has been a hundred years!"

Katara rushed over to the increasingly distraught airbender, murmuring comforts as she encased him in her arms. I thought her an extremely motherly type. As the thought crossed my mind, I realized that it made sense, given that she had been the only female in her household for many years—she probably assumed that role long ago. I could easily imagine her nagging and affectionately cleaning up after her noisy brother.

When it was clear that we weren't about to suffer another glowing disaster, I began asking innocuous questions about life at the air temple: How many people lived there? Did they each have a flying bison? When did you get Appa? When did you get those tattoos? Was learning airbending difficult? What was your schedule like? What did you do in your free time? Sokka, who understood my intent, soon joined me, followed by a genuinely curious Katara. I noted the movement of the sun in the sky, trying to gauge how much time we had passed and how much my men would have been able to accomplish in that time.

At length, our questions ran out, and Aang said, "Wow! We've been here for a really long time! Come on, I'll show you the rest of the temple!" He led the way out of his former bedroom.

The shadows were lengthening, casting long shadows where there was sufficient light to see by and leaving large expanses of space in darkness. I had not given Uncle a specific time to anticipate our return, but I suspected he would begin expecting us soon. I voiced that we could not spend all night here, and ought to pick up our pace.

"Alright," said the Avatar. "Hey! Did you see that?"

"See what?" Katara asked as Sokka rapidly searched for what Aang had seen.

"There!" Aang pointed to a small white and brown creature disappearing around a corner. He was running after it before any of us could even ask what it was. By the time my mind had caught up enough to produce the thought that I ought to go after him, he already had a considerable head start and was running like an airbender.

The three of us ran after him nevertheless, calling after the airbender, but he had gone out of sight in the labyrinth of crumbling stone hallways. We reached a juncture where we did not know which way he had gone.

"Aang!" Katara's call echoed a little, but no reply came. "What do we do now?"

"I think we should go this way," Sokka said, pointing down a corridor to the left.

"Why?"

"It's what my instincts are telling me."

Instincts. Well, why not? We didn't have much else to go on.

"Come on, then," I ordered. "There's nothing to gain by standing around."

We took off at a light run down the corridor, and had made it about twenty yards before the floor crumbled away underneath our feet.

And we were falling.

Our screams were almost drowned out by the sound of the blocks of stone crashing down around us as our fall came to an abrupt halt. It was, to say the least, not a comfortable landing. I was in shock for a moment, trying to process what had just happened.

"Well, that was unexpected," Sokka stated. I couldn't see him, or Katara for that matter, as wherever we had landed was very dark.

"Is everybody alright?" Katara's worried voice came from somewhere to his right.

"Yep. Spectacular," her brother said sarcastically.

It was just as I was about to respond to her that I was fine that I realized with immense displeasure that I was not actually fine. It seemed that there was a very large chunk of air temple structure currently resting upon my right leg, which commenced screaming at me as soon as I gave it thought.

"Zuko?"

I made a sound that was probably somewhere between a gasp and a groan—it wasn't a pretty sound. I heard them start to move at that, probably feeling their way to find me in the dark. It was then that I had the presence of mind to give them a little light, but the flames that I called to my hand took a surprising amount of effort to hold there.

Two moderately concerned and dust-covered faces soon appeared at the edge of the circle of light.

"What is it?" Katara asked.

"My leg," I ground out between my teeth. Could she really not see that?

"Alright, try not to move too much. Sokka and I will move that off of you."

I really hadn't been planning on moving anyway. Ridiculous girl.

It took them a long time and quite a bit of complaining on Sokka's part to free me. "Ugh, that was heavy."

"You don't say!" I bit out.

Katara was brushing the dust off of her hands as she knelt beside me to peer at my probably crushed-beyond-repair limb. That was how it felt at least.

"Can you move it at all?" she asked.

I tried, and I immediately regretted it. Everything went dark, and I thought I had passed out until Sokka asked me to turn the lights back on, if it wasn't too much trouble. I unclenched my fist slowly, trying to keep quiet about the pain I was in, and returned the fire to my palm.

"Well, my experience would tell me that if you can't move it, you can't walk on it either."

Katara had risen to a new height of brilliance—or perhaps I was just being ungenerous due to my less-than-blissful state.

"We need…to get…back…to my ship."

"Yeah," Sokka agreed. "One problem with that: I have no clue where we are."